Friday, August 24, 2012

Evolution

Evolution: Darwin vs. Lamarck

Darwin's theory is called descent with modification. This means that he believed that each generation of an organisms offspring is in someway different than the previous generation. Which in conclusion would mean that over time and many generations the organism would be evolving. 

Lamarck's ideas of evolution were not the same. He believed in inheritance of acquired traits, the idea was if an organism were to work on improving something over its entire life, it would be passed on to its offspring and they would inherit that improvement. For example, if a man were to work out every day and became very muscular than his children would also become muscular. His other idea of evolution in known as use and disuse, this is the thought that organisms will lose characteristics they do not use or need and they will develop characteristics that will be useful. An example is giraffes, they need long necks to be able to reach leaves on trees so over time they strengthen and stretch, their offspring then have slightly longer necks.

They both have different theories and ideas, but they seem to have one certain point in common and that is that evolution is a slow process and it takes time and process for organisms to evolve.

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